Re: Don't know where to begin

On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Mark Cannata wrote:

> When I run initdb I get the following message:
> initdb does not know where to find the files that make up Postgres (the
> PGLIB directory). You must identify the PGLIB directory either with a
> --pglib invocation option or by setting the PGLIB environment variable, or
> by having a program called 'postconfig' in your search path that outputs an
> assignment for PGLIB.
>
> I've read the man page. I guess I don't understand the syntax.

I guess you know something of environment variables, most people
have heard of the PATH variable.  It controls what directories are
searched when it is trying to find a program.  Postgres needs
to other environment variables set: PGDATA and PGLIB.  PGDATA
must be set, as you aren't getting an error about that.  It points
to where the beginning of the directories and files of the
PostgreSQL database is.  PGLIB points to the directory which
contains the main postgres shared object library.

If you
% echo $PGLIB
or
% echo $PGDATA
the echo program will show you what they contain, if anything.
For bash, you can set them via:
% export PGDATA=/path/to/postgres/data/directory

Does that make any more sense?  If you have both of those
variables when you run initdb, you shouldn't get the error
message you did.

Gord

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